


Tall Tales and Spies' Stories.

by GraceEliz



Series: Tall Tales and Spies' Stories [3]
Category: Greek and Roman Mythology, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Norse Religion & Lore
Genre: Gen, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, greek myths norse myths and marvel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-25
Updated: 2019-04-24
Packaged: 2019-06-16 04:10:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15428721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GraceEliz/pseuds/GraceEliz
Summary: The Avengers all ask for stories from my past, and I do my best to oblige.A collection of what is told.





	1. Peter

**Author's Note:**

> There will at some point be a chapter dedicated to the dedications. Stick with me, guys, and feel free to leave comments. Please. If anyone (miraculously) wants to be my proofreader let me know. And don't worry if the chapters get edited multiple times, it's just me correcting bad grammar.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter likes stories before bed. I try to avoid sad ones.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There will be a chapter called 'Fifth of July' but it isn't actually written yet. Hehe.....I'm working on it.....  
> Changes to structure will occur, because I get confused, and have to de-confuse myself, which usually means a bit of reorganisation.   
> Sorry.

Recently Peter has been curious about Norse mythology. How much of it is true? Well, I say, truth is about perspective. Truth is that what you believe to be true, the facts that you have. Fact, I tell him, is not going to fit everyone's truth. I take pity on him though, as always, and decide to tell him a story before he goes to bed.  
One day in midwinter, a very long time ago, my brother asked me who I knew out of the other pantheons. "Nobody," I responded, "except Bor who died long ago." Humming in agreement, my brother swallowed the last pomegranate seeds and announced, "I had a guest last week." I was, frankly, stunned. Who comes to the underworld? More to the point, who gets to leave again? This could be very interesting to hear. "Oh? I'm shocked, brother. Well? Who was it? Were they here for a quest? Under orders?What-"  
"Hush, sister, be calm. It was the young Norse trickster god. Loki Odinson, whose birth I believe you informed me of. His mother used to be a friend of yours, did she not? She sends her love." Speechless, I stare at my mirthful sibling in awe. I hadn't realised she still lived...

"Loki is Micheif, Lies,Trickery, so on and so forth, and he told me that he discovered one of our entrances quite by accident. He transformed into a blackbird and flew down here, tricking his way past Cerberus and Charon to land on the sill of the judging hall. He told me that he watched for quite some time, and had come to see that for all I am a fair and just ruler, I was lonely. So what does our intrepid young acquaintance do? He flew down, turned back to his Aesir form, and introduced himself." Hades- or Aidoneus, as he was still occasionally known by his birth name- leant back in his throne-like seat at the head of the long table. His pale angular face was softened by the uncommonly good humour he was in. Seeing this, I decided I would welcome this godling to our court even if I disliked him. Anyone who could make by brother forget the weight he carried as Lord of the Underworld and God of the Dead was a welcome addition to our tiny circle of friends. His shockingly blue eyes, bluer than any other Olympian's, glittered in the dull light. I smiled.

"Then he is welcome here, love, for he makes you happy. When will he return?"

My brother looks thoughtful. Perhaps he hadn't truly believed I'd react positively-our youth left us wary of those we don't know. "I think, love, we will invite him for Persephone's returning feast. That will give us time to ensure we can host properly, and allow the two of us time to hear my wife's tales." Nodding sharply, he tells me that that is what we'll do, and rises to return to the judging hall when a bell tolls hauntingly throughout the marble halls. Seph said that we really go in for the 'welcome to the land of the dead' aesthetic down here, and that "Couldn't you have gone against all of the traditional stereotypes about death? Seriously, stop laughing. I'm not joking. Why are you laughing so hard? Pull yourself together!" She rolled her eyes when I managed to calm down enough to tell her that the stereotypes come from us, we outdate them, and we really don't want to redecorate.

So the last few lonely winter week pass quicker this year, because we're planning a guest and it makes the loneliness of the cool dark underworld retreat for my brother just a little. So Loki comes for the feast, and I am beyond surprised when I see him. He's barely more than a child, just a pale teenager with hair the same impossibly dark hair as Nyx and emerald eyes and seidr, magic, whirling all over him.

He doesn't look like Frigga, until he moves and weaves a purple flower out of shimmering green seidr and present it to Seph.  
He stays for a month and returns every year without fail- for a month, a day, sometimes only for the feast. Loki becomes as much my brother as Aidon, and we promised him he would always have a place with us when he needed a change of scenery or to be away from his family.

 

"I think that's it for tonight. Pete's yawning." Tony stops Peter's growing protests with a look. He pretends he doesn't go all Dad-mode on Peter as much as he pretends Steve doesn't go Dad-mode on him. I smile, and say goodnight to Peter as he gets up to follow Tony out. There'll be another story for him tomorrow if he wants it.


	2. Thor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Thor is quiet, I sit and talk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Behold, my dears, and update is released.

Thor is usually quiet. He likes to just listen to the stories that he’s already heard from me or Loki, to laugh in the right places, wistful, nostalgic. But he’s been too quiet in the last few weeks and it’s not hard to see the ever-growing concern in the team’s faces, so it falls to me as my unofficial job to cheer him up. I am the ultimate mum friend, I am fond of saying. A story, one that he knows and will cheer him up.  
I am not a true wordsmith.

Thor has not been well recently. This worries me because it’s many years since he last fell ill. He says that Loki is dead; there can be no doubt that has something to do with it. Tonight we are sat eating together in the communal kitchen waiting for the others to get back from whatever base they’re destroying today. That Thor sat this out is what truly worries me.

“Tell a story, please?”

I look up sharply to meet his eyes. For lack of a better word, he appears haunted in the fading summer twilight, as if the ghosts of his heart’s past lurk in the corners or stroke clammy intangible fingers over his broad powerful shoulders to flick his biceps and unbalance the weight of the people he carries upon them. Perhaps he needs distraction; perhaps he needs to be allowed to speak; perhaps, perhaps, perhaps will get us nowhere. I speak gently to avoid breaking the peaceful soothing quiet filling the kitchen. “What would you like to hear?”

Thor frowns, considering, and after a few aborted efforts manages, “Loki.”

Well. What shall I tell? Yesterday I told Peter about the circumstances surrounding my meeting Loki – I make a mental note to tell him about the meeting itself at some point- so carrying on from there seems to be reasonable. An occasion as bitter as it is sweet to remember comes to mind: Loki’s engagement to Sigyn.

“Did I tell you about when Loki was first engaged? You were away I believe. Yes, I remember. As you say, it was a long time ago. 

I actually remember Loki turning up in our halls one winter morning looking ill and nervous an even paler than usual – yes! I mean it, Thor, he looked like one of the dead, stop laughing – looking lost. Well, we couldn’t just send him away. We invited him in, requested some Upperworld food...sat down to eat. The poor lad just paced up and down, the length of our table, his skin eerie pale in the marble-reflected torchlight and dull grey. He paced so long that Persephone retreated to her rooms with an amused smile and my brother had some work brought through. It was rather amusing...of a sudden he whipped around, threw himself into a chair, and announced, “Her name is Sigyn and I’m in love and I want her to marry me!”

Dramatics, dear boy, runs in your family. Regardless, we were all chuffed to bits. His eyes ere a brighter green than I’d ever seen before, brighter than the noon sun through leaves, brighter than my brother’s emeralds, brighter even than little Hela’s....he was so happy, Thor.

Loki told us of Sigyn of Vanaheim, a woman with no particular height or figure, but with hair like copper and freckles on cream skin and eyes the same dark green as oak leaves blazing with joy and life. I....Norns, Thor, she must have made such a first impression! He’d only known her a year, you know, just twelve moons, and he would have gone into Tartarus if she’d wished it. He spent hours telling us of her merits, her terrible habit of snapping her hair, the way she shrieked when something made her jump. By the end of the day I felt I knew her as well as he did. Obviously, we needed to celebrate, so we told him to bring her to us when he was ready, and we’d throw him a feast like we hadn’t since Persephone’s marriage to Hades - and being honest, I admit I don’t remember most of the week after the wedding.   
But when I think of Sigyn as I first saw her, I see Pepper, Boudicca, mighty women who fought for all that they loved and believed in. Such fire should not go unnoticed, should it? Valkyries, Thor, can be found in many places.”

Thor is softened, eyes fond as he remember his brother and blood-sister. We are happy, and we are content in each other’s company. It is good.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, a question: do you want longer chapters?  
> And give me more ideas folks this is difficult.


	3. Dragon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I finally cranked out another chapter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The only way to describe the language in this story is "high-falutin'". It's an excuse to use big words. It doesn't need a plot. Have fun anyway.

They are the Apostate Kings. They believe in no god but themselves, and spread no truth but that of the end of life. Their words are those of greed, avarice, jealousy and selfishness. I have no personal recollections to share with you, but I can recount what I have heard and read. What can one say about the Kings that I haven’t already? Their footprints in history swagger over the ashes of the cities they burned in their hunt for more, more, always more. You, Tony, are remembered as much as they are in the worlds below this one. You are the Merchant of Death, a dealer of soul-killing machines. There is a particular scent to a soul destroyed by a machine: like old oil, or cold rusted metal, like engine sheds. Hand-killed souls smell like old garages, mostly. Natural deaths have natural smells, growing grass, new hay, verdant things from the surface world. The Apostate Kings reeked of soot, decay, something not-quite-there that felt a lot like death. There were three of them – three, like the Fates, the Norns, Erinyes, like the splitting of the world, like the brothers who rule Olympus – and they only cared for the material. 

Their downfall came when the material protested.  
Today is St George’s Day, and I know little except the old tale of Saint George and the Dragon. He isn’t what I want to talk about: it’s the dragon who played the key role in the downfall of the Apostate Kings.

Now dragons smell of fire and earth when they die, like forest fires. Alive they leave the taste of soot and ash in the air, much as the Kings did. That is why the Kings claimed descendence from the fabled dragon-men who could shift form, and why in the end a dragon hauled them to their deaths. No man is permitted to masquerade as one of the dragon-men and live. The Kings cared not for laws of men or dragon, striding over the weak prince-states of the day like the Titans of old, haughty and pompous, mimicking invulnerability.

This was their first unforgivable (there are three).  
The second was the Seige of Gomareh. Gomareh was a mighty citadel by virtue of science and the enormous library, the likes of which hadn’t been seen since the Library – the Alexandrian, the definitive article – was torched by Roman soldiers. The site of Gomareh is lost, as so many ancient things are, buried deep in desert sands. Gomareh had for centuries, a millennium even, been recognised as dragon-hoard, that is, property of the last dragon. The last dragon protected Gomareh from many invaders, magicks, tumultuous events of the Earth itself. It was heralded as unkillable, unperishable. 

But the truth? The truth is that dragons burn when exposed to a hotter dragonflame. These Apostate Kings has over their reign conquered the city that was said to hold the secret of manufactured dragonflame – Greek Fire, as has never been recreated since then, a secret buried with the ashes of the Kings’ passing. This fire was said to glow poison-green when in contact with rock, deep moss when on wood, and said to scream like the souls of the damned when it hit dragonskin. Damned souls don’t have a sound. That sort of screaming is silent. The screaming of fire on dragonskin is the scream of a dying dragon itself, wrenched out of its wretched soul in the utmost agony. Not even Woe wails in such a manner. The Kings had bottles of Greek Fire, clear glass to show the eery blue-green of liquid fire blazing like contained suns against black leather, glinting off silver crowns.

Gomareh nestled in the dunes five days from the nearest water, a city of Ash-stained sandstone looming protectively over its thousands of inhabitants. The Kings were seen approaching under a serpentine spire of black smoke, green lightning bolts searing the sand underfoot, five days away. They arrived in two. The seige lasted a month and killed half of the city (this is the second unforgiveable).

When the city gave in, starved, emaciated, a stronghold only for the archives nobody was left to read, they torched it. Greek Fire painted the landscape for hundreds of miles in greens and blues and screaming for weeks. The great city of Gomareh razed to the sand it came from. Nothing was left, nothing but devastation, the footprint of the Kings.

Then they went for the dragon lurking beneath the archives. The heat of it warmed the springs of the market, kept the frosts off the scrolls, kept the children happy and healthy. Dragonbreath is a great healer.  
The Kings hesitated only as long as it took them to open the bottles of blue-green death criss-crossed on their chests to attack. The dragon screamed and screamed and screamed, echoing through the rock itself. The sky wept, the sea roared, Hades itself humming in fury as the scent of woodsmoke filled what remained of the once-mighty city. The Kings damned themselves truly to an eternity that day.  
Dragons are not meant to be slaughtered by men.

(this was their last unforgiveable)

As the dragon died it burned, hotter than any manufactured flame, vaporising the armies of the Kings and all that lay above in the desert sands. The Kings it caught in its teeth, a dying revenge, dragging them to hell with it.

They were the Apostate Kings. They believed in no god but themselves, and spread no truth but that of the end of life. Look upon them, and see that when your end draws near you don’t leave behind metal and blood and soot.


End file.
